


kept it in my chest

by sleepinnude



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, M/M, bruce's hands on steve's abs, gratuitous intimate touching without any semblance of plot, mindfulness breathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 22:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepinnude/pseuds/sleepinnude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has trouble breathing. Bruce helps him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kept it in my chest

Something has gone wrong. Something has gone terribly wrong and Bruce only knows this from the wild set of Steve’s eyes when he seeks him out. The lab is cool with recycled air but beads of sweat are picked out on Steve’s temples and as he comes closer, Bruce can clearly make out the clench of his fists, the tight line across his jaw. “What happened, Cap?” Bruce asks softly, shifting away from the screen he had been calculating on. He immediately regrets the slip of the epithet from the way Steve’s shoulders bunch spasmodically at it.

“There… It was…bad,” Steve manages to get out and Bruce can see the hitch of his chest.

“What was?” he asked, tone quiet and prompting but straining not to seem condescending. Steve had been condescended to enough, treated like a child and backed away from. Bruce takes a step toward him.

“The… It was supposed to be easy.” He swallows. “Routine. Something...happened.”

Bruce nods, takes another step toward Steve to see if he’ll let him. The hand he presses to Steve’s shoulder is firm and solid and Steve, to Bruce’s relief, cants into it. Bruce knows no one was badly hurt or – God forbid – killed. He would have been notified if that were the case. Steve’s not suited up any longer and only looks a little rough at the edges, nothing too bad. It must have been just close enough, he figures.

“All right,” Bruce hums out and Steve looks at him with a plea in his eyes. He won’t ask for it, hardly knows how to or which words to use if he were to. Bruce nods once and some of the aching tension seeps from Steve’s spine.

Licking his lips, Bruce lays his hand to the worn cotton of Steve’s tee shirt. His palm spreads warm over Steve’s abdomen, thumb slotted just against the bottom of his sternum. “Just… Listen to me for a minute okay?” Steve nods. There’s the echo of a heart beat against Bruce’s hand and he’s not sure if it’s Steve’s or the false beat in his own thumb. (Anatomy and experience tell him the answer easily but he’s focused on Steve and doesn’t have the inclination to suss it all out.) “Good,” Bruce says shortly with Steve’s breathing rabbit-quick, oblique muscles working like a bellows.

“Focus on my hand,” Bruce tells him, years and years of mindfulness meditation coming easily. “Feel it on your body at every point that it connects.” Steve’s eyes close, tightly first but then relaxing so that the eyelashes twitch against his cheekbones. There’s a high flush there and Bruce makes sure that he’s giving the other man enough space. “Feel it rising and falling against your stomach?” he asks.

Steve doesn’t answer.

“Steve,” he prompts, voice carefully neutral. “Can you feel it? Moving up and down with your stomach?”

Steve takes in a breath and holds it, nodding.

“Good. Okay. You need to breathe. Just normally. And keep paying attention to my hand, all right?” Bruce’s eyes track Steve throughout, skipping from his face to his chest to his stomach. Steve breathes.

It takes a few minutes, but finally the pattern of his breath evens out. “Good,” Bruce murmurs, praising him throughout in a soft, comforting buzz of a voice. “Deep breathes. All the way through.”  
Steve’s swaying on his feet a little, breathing in long and deep pulls that reach through his diaphragm and wrack his shoulders in time. “Feel that?” Bruce asks, once he’s back on rhythm, back to something stable.

“Yeah,” Steve answers slowly. “Yes.”

Steve keeps breathing and Bruce lays his other hand to Steve’s hip, a charade of an embrace. Steve doesn’t start at the touch and just takes in a solid, fluid breath and pitches forward at the exhale. He hunches his shoulder and bends his knees, stooping to press his forehead to Bruce’s shoulder. A fond smile touches Bruce’s face and, not for the first time, he’s struck with how very young Steve is, truly.

“Feel better?” Bruce asks, a hand to Steve’s hair, stroking over the nape of his neck with calloused fingers. Steve shivers and drops a hand to Bruce’s side, silently asking him not to stop.

“Yes. Sorry. Thank you,” Steve mumbled out without halting.

“Don’t apologize. Definitely don’t apologize,” Bruce tells him. “And don’t thank me.”

Steve hums his protest, faint and childlike. Bruce laughs and traces his fingers up through Steve’s hair, moving against the grain to make the younger man groan in his throat.

“Don’t thank me,” Bruce repeats, voice rough in a whisper and lips moving against Steve’s temple. “Just breathe.”


End file.
